Dit is een overdruk van

Temma Kaplan
On the socialist origins of International Women’s Day
Feminist Studies 11, No. 1 (1985), pp. 163-171.
-~- .~-~

162
COMMENTARY
ON THE SOCIALIST ORIGINS OF
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

TEMMA KAPLAN

[Each March 8, I relate to my women's studies classes the story of Inter-

national Women's Day. lt's a story I have had recounted to me nume-
rous times and therefore know weil. A spontaneous demonstration
staged by New York Oty women garment and textile workers in 1857,
protesting low wages, the twelve-hour workday, and increasing work
loods, was dispersed by the police, rather brutally. Many women were
arrested; some were trampled by the érowds. Fifty years later, on the
anniversary of that demonstration, International Women's Day was
established in their memory. My students respond to this story with an
emotion best described as gratitude. March 8 usually coincides with
that moment in the semester when they feel most the weight of women's
oppression: theyare hungry for knowiedge of women's resistance. The
wamen garment workers of New York Oty fill their needs for heroic

k
. foremothers.
Sa it was with ambivalence-scholarlyinterest but political mis- -
ü
givings-that I read in the French feminist periodical La Revue d'en
*
face (see no. 12, Fall1982, pp. 67-80) an article by Liliane Kandel and
Françoise Picq, "Le Mythe des origines, A propos de la journée interna-
tionale des femmes. " The myth of the origins? Had there never been
such an event as our 1857 demonstration? Indeed, Kandel and Picq
report, the New York City garment workers' demonstration of 1857
was a legend born in 1955. In their quite illuminating article, they
speculate on the origins of "the 1857 legend," on the likelihood that, in
1955, it was opportune "to detach International Women's Day {rom its
Soviet history in ordf!r to give it a more international origin, more an-
cient than Bolshevism, more spontaneous than a decision of a Congress
or the initiative of women affiliated to the Party, land that] the date,
1857, was chosen as a tribute to Clara Zetkin, born that year. . . ."
"'n"';M;~' ~...À;A~ 11 -~ 1 ''''-_:-- 11"'°"" ct!ILu "._:_:.. CO >:.- T--
164 Temma Kaplan
lntrigued by this revision of our historical record, the editors of
Feminist Studies asked Temma Kaplan, whose research on socialist
rituals and holidays was familiar to us, to furnish us a truer record of
the origins of lnternational Womens Day. Kaplans thorough analysis
of the rise of lnternational Womens Day demolishes a myth that many
of us have relied upon to interest our students in the past. My students,
who drew inspiration {rom the idea of a spontaneous demonstration,
will surely miss the 1857 legend. But for the 1980s, when we need to
understand better the effectiveness of organized resistance, is it not fit-
ting that we draw inspiration not only {rom spontaneous demonstrators,
but also (rom wamen who engaged in long-term struggle and who
created rituals that sustained their struggle in the face of unrelenting
opposition? -Claire G. Moses]
One way late-nineteenth-century socialists and anarchists at-
tempted to establish secular communal traditi,ons was through
holidays. Even in Spain, leftists held festivals on July 14, French
Bastille Day, because that was the most revolutionary date on the
European calendar until the Russian Revolution. Socialists chose
that date to meet in Paris in 1889 to organize the Second Interna-
tional Working Man's Association, an assembly of socialist parties,
trade unions, and political clubs. aften, as with the commemora-
tion of the Paris Commune on any day between March 18 and
March 28, the date of the holiday varied. Ultimately, it was the
solidification of a sense of community rather than the date that
really mattered. 1
The first International Woman's Day (singular) was held on
February 23, 1909,in the United States. LikeMay Day, the history
of which it resembles, Woman's Day started as a means by which
to unite the popular community around a set of common goals.
Bath holidays originally took place on Sundays 50 that people
would not miss a day of work. Both holidays became fixed on
specific dates because historical events overtook demonstrators.1
In a curious development, an apocryphal story surfaced in
French Communist circles in the 1950s. Allegedlya brutally re-
pressed New York strike of female textile workers on March 8,
1857, had led to a rally in commemoration of its fiftieth anniver-
sary in 1907. Neither event seems to have taken place, but many
Europeans think March 8, 1907, inaugurated International
Temma Kaplan 165
Woman's Day. $ome French feminists view this myth as a chapter
in ,along-standingconflictbetween feministsand communists over
whether women have rights beyond those they hold as workers.3
The real history of International Woman's Day cannot be
separated from the politicallife of Clara Zetkin. She attended the
1889 Bastille Day Paris meeting that created the Second Interna-
tional. At that time, the assembied leftists agreed on a May Day
demonstration calling for the eight-hour day and limitations on
female and child labor, the plank Zetkin promoted. As the editor
between 1890 and 1915of the Gennan SocialDemocratic party's
women's newspaper Gleichheit,she promoted the interests of
working-class women. Although Zetkin was a virulent opponent
of feminists inside and outside her party, she tried to familiarize
socialistswith the conditions of female workers. After the war she
became a Communist and brought International Woman's Day
with her into the Third International in 1922.4From this time on,
, International Women's Day lit seems to have become plural after
1 1945) became a Communist holiday. Since the late sixties,
I! feminists have revitalizedthe celebration and have infused it with
new meaning.
,tI
Many socialist women in Europe and America strengthened
their commitment to internationalism in the years before World
I
War One. On August 17, 1907-just before the meeting of the Se-
! cond International in Stuttgart, Germany - women associated with
i
socialism met together. Under the leadership of Clara Zetkin and
1 LouiseZietz,these socialistwomen pledged to fight for equality in
every aspect of life,and discussed demonstrating to publicize their
j goals. '
! In both the United States and Europe, socialists had taken a
I
J backseat to suffragistsin fightingfor the vote because they viewed
~ women's political rights as subordinate to the economic advance-
J
I! ment of the male working class. Throughout the world, leftistshad
associated women's votes with conservatives, and the Americans
i were no exception. Nevertheless, women in the Second Interna-
I
I tional fmally won the support of their comrades for the suffrage
!
j
campaign before the First World War. In 1908,the Socialistparty
of the United States appointed the Women's National Committee
to Campaign for the Suffrage, and asked them to organize
demonstrations. Eagerto get started, Branch Number 3 of the New
York City Social Democratie Women's Society held a mass
166 Temma Kaplan
meeting on woman suffrage on March 8, 1908.6
The American Sodalists declared the last Sunday in February as
National Woman's Day. In New York on February 23, 1909, the
principal meeting was at the Murray Hili Lyceum at Thirty-fourth
and Third Avenue. Two thousand people heard Leonora O'Reilly
and others explain the principles of equal rights and demand votes
for women. At the Brooklyn Labor Lyceum meeting, there was a
recitation of 'Tbe God of Gold," followed by rousing singing.
Cbarlotte Perkins Gilman addressed the congregation of the
Parkside Church in Brooklyn along with the secretary of the
Cbristian Socialist Fellowship. "lt is true that a woman's duty is
centered in her home and motherhood," Gilman said, but "home
should mean the whole country and not be confined to three or
four rooms or a city or a state.'"
The New York rally the following year was on February 27,
1910, and opened with a Carnegie Hall meeting. The audience
sang the Marseillaise before Rose Schneiderman, Charlotte
Perkins Gilman, and Metta 1. Stem explained how the German
socialist women had led the way at Stuttgart in 1907by cal1ingfor
women's economie equality and then for the vote.8
The American socialistsbegan International Woman's Day with
a National Woman's Day in 1909,while the Europeans followedin
1911. A similar pattern had developed with May Day, which the
Knights of Labor had introduced in 1886, but which the Euro-
peans did not adopt until 1890. At the International Socialist
Women's Meeting that preceded the general meeting of the Second
International in Copenhagen in August 1910,Luise Zietzsuggested
holding an International Woman's Day the following year, and
Clara Zetkin seconded the request, but they never specified a
date. 9
On March 18, 1911, on the fortieth anniversary of the Paris
Commune, the first International Woman's Day was held in
Europe to publicize the need for women's rights and the suffrage.
However, the Americans continued to rally on the last Sunday in
February.
In a rare show of solidarity, socialistwomen in Bostonproposed
to the suffragists that they march together to local government
hearings on suffrage on February 23, 1911.The women organized
an outdoor rally and a meeting at Ford Hall. Mter gathering at
Park Square, they reached the hearing room only to find that it
Temma Kaplan 167
was too small to hold all of them. With all the women dressed in
white, inspired by the British suffragists, they carried their dif-
ferent banners depending upon their political beliefs, but the
socialists outnumbered the suffragists. The journalist for the
Women:SJoumal (the official organ of the National American
Woman's Suffrage Associationl was afraid that "the socialist
women seem to be the only ones earnest enough to parade for the
cause."IO
In New York, the meeting for International Woman's Day in
1911 was held on February 25 on a Saturday night at Carnegie
Hall. The keynote speech by Bertha Fraser praised women's in-
ability to fight as a positive quality for citizenship. "Anotherargu.
ment against women is that they cannot be soldiers. And what is
more, when they get the ballot, they will use it to make war im-
possible."11
In Vienna, in the first European celebration of International
Women's Day on March 18, 1911, women marched around the
Ringstrasse,carrying banners including red flags commemorating
the martyrs of the Paris Commune. The women stopped in front
of the flower market in that civiccenter and demonstrated in favor
of female suffrage. Throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
there were 300 women's demonstrations. On that day in 1911,the
Socialistdelegates to the Austrian parliament openly championed
women's equality and the suffrage for the first time, IZ thereby giv-
ing up in word if not deed, long-standing socialist opposition to
women's votes. But just as some socialist men were beginning to
support votes for women, the war ended all possibility for sodal
reform for five years.
During the first winter and spring of World War I in 1915,
women began to take action. They proclaimed their rights as
wives and mothers or as housekeepers in public as weUas private
realms to intereede where the usual politicalleaders seemed in-
competent. International Woman's Day provided such an oppor-
tunity. In New York, there were many International Woman's
Day celebrations, such as the one in the Bronx where the 1907
Barnard graduate and adjunct professor of economicsJuliet Stuart
Poyntz spoke." SocialistMarian Craig Wentworth wrote a play in
which the women went on strike against childbirth until they were
admitted to the councils of war. A picture in the New York Call
showed a mother and child against a wartorn background. Tbe

168
Temma Kaplan
caption asked whether women would vote for this if they had the
vote.14
In Berne, Switzerland, Clara Zetkin gathered socialist women
from neutral and warring countries to demonstrate against the
war. For protesters from belligerent nations, this meant treason
against their countries and their parties. The women who marched
on March 7, 1915, did not support their countries East or West.
They called for the "reconstitution of the Second International,"
which had collapsed under the weight of nationalism in 1914,but
they did not demand a new, Third International, as the Russian
Bolshevik exiles in Switzerland wanted them to do. The Bolshe-
viks organizedanother meeting for that in early September 1915at
Zimmerwald, not far from Berne, where the embryo of the Third
International was formed.15
The socialist women of Berne carried back a manifesto they
distributed clandestinely in their countries. It was addressed 'To
the women of the proletariat," and asked, "Where are your
husbands? Where are your sons?' It declared that the .workers
have nothing to gain from the w.ar.They have everything to lose,
everything, everything that is dear to them." It exhorted women to
take action to win peace.
When the French socialist Louise Saumoneau returned from
two months in jail in November 1915 after her arrest for
distributing the manifesto in France, she discovered that her
favorite nephew, a leftist, hàd been killed in the war. She always
responded to grief with action, and she wrote her tractas a way of
mourning. It cried out that "sixteenmonths ago, we the mothers,
the wives, the sisters of those who left. . .despite our grief, kept the
hope that the being who was so dear to us would return able-
bodied. Not one of us could admit that the young robust man she
took to the station would not come back again. Since then, Alas!
how many women lare) in mourning. . . ."16
The war went on despite all the efforts of women, but so did the
socialist celebration of International Woman's Day. Socialist
women in New York applauded the Anti-High Price League,
which forced municipal officials to establish price controls on
Kosher butchers. They commemorated International Woman's
Day at the end of February by calling for support for women's
rights to feed their families.
'Thp war r.a11!';Pn fRr wnro;p ~hnrtsHJPS Rmnno thp hPllioprpnts
'1'
Temma Kaplan 169
Europe. In ltaly, the price of fIour had risen 88 percent, wine 144
percent, and potatoes 131 percent over 1910 prices by January
1917.17On International Woman's Day, February 23,1917, female
socialists in Turin, Italy, hung posters addressed to women
throughout the working-class neighborhoods. Tbe posters said,
"Hasn'tthere been enough torment from this war? Now the food
necessary for our children has begun to disappear. It is time for us
to act in the name of suffering humanity. Our cry is 'Down with
armst' We are part of the same family. We want peace. We must
show that women can protect those who depend on them.""
The most dramatic celebration of International Woman's Day
was in 1917in Russia. Led by feminist Alexandra Kollontai,Rus-
sian women had begun celebrating the day American-style,
marching the last Sunday in February in 1913.Centralto their pro-
test in 1917 were complaints over deteriorating living conditions.
Rents had more than doubled in St. Petersburg, renamed Petro-,
grad, between 1905and 1915.Food prices, particularly the cost of
fIour and bread, rose between 80 and 120 percent in most Euro-
pean cities. The price per pound of rye bread, the staple of
working-classdiets in Petrograd, rose from three kopeks in 1913to
eighteen kopeks in 1916. Even soap rose 245 percent in 1917
Petrograd.19Merchants speculated in grain, fuel, and meat, while
factories closed for lack of energy to run the plants. Female and
male wage earners who faced layoffs often went on strike. Be-
tween January and February 1917, more than half a million Rus-
sian workers, mostly in Petrograd, went out. '
Taking the occasion of International Woman's Day IMarch 8th
in the West, but February 23d on the Gregorian calendar), women
led a demonstration from the factories and the breadlines. Metal-
lurgicalworkers, mostly men, joined them despite the fact that the
Bolsheviks regarded the women's mobilization as precipitous.
On February 25, two days after the women's insurrection had
begun on International Woman's Day, the czar ordered General
Khabalovof the Petrograd Military District to shoot if necessary in
order to crush the women's revolution. Khabalov summarized the
problems authorities feel when confronted with women's con-
sumer demands. He explained that when they said, "Give us
bread!"we could give them bread and that was the end of it. But
when they said, "Down with the autocracy!"we could no longer
in appease them with bread.20Thus began the February revolution in
 f'
I
170 Temma Kaplan
Russia. By March 12 (Gregorian February 27), Czar Nicholas II
had been forced to abdicate. The provisional government formed
to rule until the election of a constituent assembly became the first
government of a major power to grant women the right to vote.21
The events of 1917 in Russia set the date for the celebration of
International Woman's Day elsewhere in Europe beginning the
following year. Toward the end of the war, on March 8, 1918, the
Austrian women celebrated International Woman's Day. Three
thousand women, despite the ban on demonstrating, marched in
small groups, along the Ringstrasse past the parliament and the
Palace of justice. There were also demonstrations elsewhere in the
empire. As Adelheid Popp, leader of Austrian socialist women, ex-
plained, the women attempted as wives and mothers to show their
disgust for the war and their demand for peace.22
With Clara Zetkin's help, Lenin established International
Women's Day as a Communist holiday in 1922, when the Chinese
Cornmunists started to celebrate it. In Spain, fol1owing the victory
of the Popular Front slate in the February 1936 elections, La Pa-
sionaria, one of the leaders of the Spanish Communist party, led
thousands of women to demonstrate in Madrid on International
Woman's Day, March 8, to demand protection of the republic
against the growing fascist threat.
After the Second World War, International Woman's Day re-
mained a communist holiday until around 1967. According to one
story, it was revived in the United States bya women's group at
the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, which included
daughters of American Communists who remembered having
heard of the holiday. Since then, it has become the occasion for a
new sen se of female consciousness and a new sense of feminist in-
ternationalism.
NOTES
My thanks to Claudia Koonz, Ruth Milkman, and Robert MoelIer.
1. For a discussion of holidays on the Left, see Temma Kaplan, "CivicRituals and Pat.
terns of Resistance in Barcelona, 1890-1930:' in The Power of the Past:Essaysfor Eric
Hobsbawm, ed. Pat Thane, Geoffrey Crossic, and Roderick Floud jCambridge: 1984),
173-93.
2. Michelle Perrot, 'The First of May 1890 in France: The Birth of a Working-Class
Ritu~I," in Thanp, ('rossk, ~nd Floud, Power of thl' Past, 143.71.
Temma Kaplan 171
3. Liliane Kandel and Françoise Picq, "Le Mythe des origines à propos de la journée
internationale des femmes." La Revue d'En Face, ~o. 12 jFall 19821: 67.80.
4. Karen Honeycutt, "Clara Zetkin: A Left-Wing Socialist and Feminist in Wilhelmian
Germany" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1975!; Renate Pore, A Conflict of Interest:
Women in German Social Democracy, 1919-1933 IWestport, Conn.: Greenwood Pre ss,
19811; and Jean H. Quataert, Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 1885-1917
jPrinceton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
5. Bericht der 1. Intemationalen Frauenkonferenz Stuttgart, 17 Aug. 1907, Stuttgart, 1907,
cited in Quataert, 249.
6. Mentioned in "New York City," Socialist Woman, March 1908, included with a per-
sonalletter from Renée Cöté, 16 Feb. 1984. It was omitted by mis take from her hook
edited with Sylvie Dupont, La journée internationale des femmes ou les vrais faits et les
vraies dates des mystérieuses origines de 8 mars jusqu'ici embroui/lées, truquées, oubliées: la
clef des énigmes la vérité historique (Montreal: 19841.
7. "The Suffragists and Socialists Demand Votes for Women," Cal/, 1 Mal. 1909, 1.
8. "A.B.C A Day of Anticipation:' Cal/, 27 Feb. 1910, Magazine, 13. I
9. Adelheid Popp, Der Weg zur Hohe: Die Sozialdemokratische Frauenbewegung Oster-
reichs (Vienna: 1930), 99.
10. Women's journaI. 56.
11. "Socialists Argue Strongly in Favor of Women's Suffrage," Call, 26 Feb. 1911,
Magazine, 1-2.
12. Popp, 100.
13. "Great Socialist Meetings will Mark Woman's Day Tomorrow," Call, 27 Feb. 1915, 1.
14. Ibid.
15. Charles Sowerwine, Sisters or Citizens? Women and Socialismin Francesince 1876
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 151.
16. Ibid., 148, 152.
17. Encarecimiento de la vida durante la Guerra: Precios de la subsistencias en EspalÏ.ay en
el extranjero, 1914-1918 IMadrid , 19181,49.
18. Paolo Spriano, Socialismo e classe operaia a Torino dal 1892 011913 (Turin, 19581,
393. For other examples of politica 1movements in which women claim rights to act in
the name of their community, see Temma Kaplan, "Female Consciousness and Collec-
tive Action: The Case of Barcelona, 1910-1918:' Signs 7 (Spring 19821: 545-66.
19. Dale Ross, ''The Role of the Women in Petrograd in War, Revolution, and Counter-
Revolution, 1914-1921" (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 19731. 28.
20. Ibid., 32.
21. Bemice Glatzer Rosenthal, "Love on the Tractor: Women in the Russian Revolution
and af ter," in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal and
Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 19771, 370-99, 377.
22. Popp, 100.